rodney

It is an honor to have been able to produce this video after my brother's unjust discharge after his and our advocacy for him to literally be able to choose pork-n-beans over black-eyed peas in his residential program. Retaliation is all too common when people with intellectual and developmental disabilities stand up for their most basic human rights. While programs follow all the protocols set forth by policies and procedures in place to ensure the Rights of people with disabilities are not violated, there are no consequences when these Rights to Choice are not honored. As in my brother's case, his Service Plan was well written to meet the standards of our state's Department of Mental Health and Medicaid funding for residential services, even including pictures of his beloved food choices. However, as he and we began to advocate for those choices to be honored, what first appeared to be compassionate help, after two years of no change, turned into retaliation because there was not any accountability for the changes not being made. The primary focus of this video is the conflict of interest when residential personal care services are combined with housing. As in Rodney's case, not even state and federal level funded sources, who agreed with us and are in place to ensure his rights and protection, can protect the injustice of someone with limited social and communication skills from losing their home and in turn, their neighborhood, friends, and social capital that takes years to build. Disability service providers have a "cash cow" in renting to the same people to whom they provide services. This leaves individuals and families fearful of expressing their needs to basic Human Rights because, as in Rodney's case, they fear losing their home and friends. We know many people who have been discharged or left programs due to abuse and neglect and are stigmatized as being the problem simply because of their advocacy. Our family is the only one I know who was able to mediate this atrocity. I attribute this to my being a sibling and parent who, after being raise in poverty where my mother had to fight for a lot of what we did have and taught us to have no shame in standing up for what is right, owning a business where we could pull money together quickly from our business accounts to purchase this foreclosed home for cash, having friends and family in construction who pulled together with us, and the fight within me to prevent my own daughter from having to fight this same fight for my son, her brother, in the coming years, was the reason we could do this when many others have none of these options. It's sad. It's wrong. It's total injustice. It's discrimination. It's inhumane. It's a story that if not shared, will leave the future generations of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including those with Autism, to be depressed, angry, even suicidal and their families at a complete loss to help them out of pure fear of losing what few services they have, including the most needed, their home! Service providers continue to win the argument of keeping the housing combined, even currently compromising to have Leases for apartments/houses with those they serve. But, even with a Lease, they can and will discharge those self-advocating, when the lease is up, for more "compliant" residents. Housing and services must be separated for people with disabilities to truly have the same freedom of choice of Basic Human Rights as their non-disabled peers.